Rethinking Water Planning

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Why is the project relevant to you?

With growth and housing delivery being priorities, water is becoming crucial to local authority plans especially in water stressed areas of the country. This project focused on the co-development of statutory water plans. The content of these plans, including evidence and project timelines, can either support or hinder development. Town and country planning specialists and the water industry need to improve knowledge exchange to support each other's work. This project explored ways to combine multiple statutory water plans, making the overall water management clearer.

Key messages for Town and country planning specialists

The participatory systems mapping in the case studies reveals the complexity of the water system. It also shows how decisions about housing, growth, development locations, and infrastructure are closely connected to our water environment and should be considered as a whole.

Call to action

We need to keep working together across spatial and water planning to ensure our goals, evidence, and ambitions are aligned. Consistent data structures and standards are also needed to enable sharing across organisations and industries.

Call to action

We encourage local planners to use the planning process to address water-related issues. Our project "Maximising the potential of planning policy for water" explores this in detail. It's highly recommended to consider river and sewage catchments when making land use decisions.

Call to action

One key solution from this project is to reduce the demand on public water supply so it can be shared among more people and businesses. Planning authorities and building regulations need to work with developers to ensure water use and disposal are considered early in both residential and commercial projects.

Call to action